CANCELLED: 2012-2013 Devlin Lecture
Human Rights and Church-State Relations: the new challenges
Church-state relations and related state policies tend to imply some kind of differential treatment between religions. This gives rise to tensions between the prohibition against discrimination on the basis of religion and the duty of the state to uphold neutrality and impartiality in terms of the freedom of religion. Strikingly, international organizations are reluctant to impose limits on states in this respect, thus downplaying the effective role of human rights. In this lecture, Professor Henrard will examine this situation in terms of the guiding principles regarding human rights. By evaluating the Lautsi judgments made by the European Court of Human Rights, she will investigate the argument that the changed religious demographics further reduce the legitimacy of giving a special status to a religion that used to be adhered to by the vast majority of people in a country.
Kristin Henrard
Kristin Henrard, PhD, LLM
Kristin Henrard is a professor of minority protection at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam (EUR) as well as associate professor of Constitutional Law. Dr. Henrard studied law at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, with special focus on human rights and international law. She obtained an LLM from Harvard Law School in 1995. Her publications are in the areas of human rights and minority protection, including educational rights, linguistic rights, the principle of equal treatment and the prohibition of (racial) discrimination, the freedom of religion and the accommodation of religious diversity, socio-economic and political participation. Dr. Henrard established the Minority Research Network and is the co-editor of the Brill Series on Group and Minority Rights.
Devlin Lecture Fund